TFTC: A Bitcoin Podcast - #533: Preparing For The Next Bull Run with Will Reeves

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Marty sits down with Will Reeves to discuss the progress of Fold and how they've withstood and harnessed the bear markets. Will on Twitter: https://x.com/wlrvs Fold App: https://use.foldapp.com/ 0:00 - Intro 1:25 - Reflecting on the years 8:00 - How Fold made it 14:59 - River & Unchained 16:15 - Harnessing the bear market 27:15 - Gradually, Then Suddenly & Zaprite 28:53 - Fold users 33:39 - Leading the way with new strategies 44:30 - Focusing on bitcoin 51:53 - Ten31 1:00:28 - Succeeding by operating with integrity 1:13:20 - Come a long way, long way to go Shoutout to our sponsors: River https://river.com/tftc Unchained https://unchained.com/concierge/ Zaprite https://zaprite.com/tftc Gradually, Then Suddenly https://thesaifhouse.com/gradually TFTC Merch is Available Shop Now: https://merch.tftc.io Join the TFTC Movement: Main YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/TFTC21/videos Clips YT Channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUQcW3jxfQfEUS8kqR5pJtQ Website https://tftc.io/ Twitter https://twitter.com/tftc21 Instagram https://www.instagram.com/tftc.io/ Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://tftc.io/podcasts/

bear markets are entirely for preparing for bull markets i believe we're in the foothills of the next bull run building and bitcoin right now is one of the largest potential markets and one of the most valuable markets that you could possibly focus on you're operating within an industry that essentially every year is growing exponentially and allowing you to dream with it no matter how big your vision is it's definitely not bigger than bitcoin we are operating a bitcoin company and we have access to some of the best talent in the world because people are coming they want to to make the world a better place by furthering bitcoin in the world and fold is their vehicle to do that this rip of tftc was brought to you by river it's the best place to buy bitcoin go

to river.com slash tftc and enjoy this episode you've had a dynamic where money's become freer than free. If you talk about a Fed just gone nuts, all the central banks going nuts. So it's all acting like safe haven. I believe that in a world where central bankers are tripping over themselves to devalue their currency, Bitcoin wins. In the world of fiat currencies, Bitcoin is the victor. I mean, that's part of the bull case for Bitcoin. If you're not paying attention, he probably should be and we're live well we've come a long

way from drinking bottles of scribe in my studio apartment in Brooklyn many years ago we have I believe it ended with bottles of scribe it started with a full bottle of mezcal between us

and just thinking about all the other things that were going on at the time holy shit uh things changed and you know a lot of a lot of stuff has happened since that those early days of the uh marty bent in your old studio was that where it was yeah in my uh my studio apartment that we also called the podcasting studio sometimes my wife would be a little passed out on the bed while we were recording but i remember that no it is it is crazy um preparing for this interview and reflecting on that interview the other that we've done between

now and then and how far fold has come just uh it's really cool to see unfold over the course of the last six five six years how's uh how's all this feel for you man it definitely feels uh surreal to look back i think all of bitcoins uh kind of working in it living in it you know having your social group and it's, it's truly a different timeline that we live on. Like, and just, and just real, like the speed of which things change, the speed of which things happen truly feels like we're just on a different timeline. And it definitely feels like, you know, years, nothing happened. And then days, years happen, things like that. And I can actually look back and point to a few days that truly were the reason why it feels like it's been a decade

when it really you know we may be talking about four years or so um just because of how early this uh whole project experiment space was and how just it took a few really critical things that really unlocked you know not only opportunity for me for fold for you the amount of people in the space and you can look back and there's a good handful of things that you know kind of changed everything and uh i maybe sometimes i think looking back that that's uh i forget about i forget about how important those things really were and i just am like where did all the time go now it's funny matt and i were reflecting a couple weeks ago because i did or a few weeks ago now at the uh the bitcoin conference when we did our live show and to think in 2019 you were

there i believe uh in the parking garage in san francisco doing a live show on a picnic bench like like you said there's years where it feels like nothing's happening and then you look up and it's like holy shit look where we are now um and on that like what are some of those pivotal days and inflection points that you're referencing man i so uh 2019 uh sam the the bitcoin conference 2019 that we launched the fold app like that was clearly one of them and it was like hey we're going to go to the uh the conference and we're going to get a bunch of new users from it little do you know like the conference back then was a couple thousand people um the space was much smaller but we you know launched the the the the kind of new version of the fold app which was a

huge thing for us um it was a inflection point because it was when we decided to pivot from hey we're going to use fold as a means of as a primarily as a means of spending your bitcoin to one of primarily as a means of earning bitcoin rewards and it was a big bet for us to to change that up because historically fold had been involved in you know bitcoin primarily as a medium of exchange and then we switch you know moving to rewards it was a different focus different customer set and it ended up being much larger much bigger than we ever could have imagined and i remember that time being at that san francisco conference launching that and immediately seeing the uptake and it's one of those things as a product person

where you know you can spend a lot of time you can build a lot of things but really it's only until you've had those moments where you build something and then it catches fire very quickly does you know is is that's a really special feeling and to have been tinkering around and with bitcoin products and consumer finance within bitcoin for a while before that to see something hit like like uh folds rewards app did was was amazing so i'd say that was absolutely one of them um we shortly after that we inked a deal with visa uh to launch the first bitcoin rewards debit card you know that alone i think we had you know 250 000 people on a wait list um we are growth charts absolutely skyrocketing everywhere you know visa coming in was the first time they partnered with

a Bitcoin or crypto company at all. And we had a big announcement on my birthday of like 2020 or something like that. And it just blew up. You know, there's other things that aren't even really related. You know, in the space, there's, you know, just just this year alone, I think, looking at, you know, you know, essentially starting the year with our ETFs launching. And then a couple weeks ago presidential candidates starting to speak about bitcoin very directly either for against or uh and you know courting this this new electorate this orange electorate and the acceleration between those two events i think is far outpaces any of the acceleration we had seen before and i think that's really just looking that we're just going to have to you know this

whole space is going to continue to accelerate in the future at a pace that will surprise us um and you know i it looks back and at 2019 it feels like things a lot happened but kind of happened in much slower cycles and now it seems like it's much much more packed it's a lot it's happening over a broader group of people and it feels like bitcoin is just a much bigger thing yeah completely again i think that's why i'm so excited to talk to you at this particular juncture in your life and the maturation of fold as a company is that i just know from the my capacity at 1031 dealing with a bunch of founders in the space yourself included um i'm sure there's a a ton of them listening to this trying to figure out all right what can we do with our business

that full did right to get to this point where you're going through the SPAC price or SPAC process excuse me going public like what advice would you give to other founders out there whether it be in terms of things to focus on a product marketing timing what of those three things was or the mix of those three things you have to lean into at different points in time and as you mentioned earlier there is years where it felt like nothing happened and how could other founders build the intestinal fortitude to to slug through the the bear cycles if you will the times where things are relatively boring and it may not seem as rosy as you'd like it to yeah i mean i the 1031 group i always like hanging out with the the portfolio and the other founders um because being

in bitcoin and developing a business in bitcoin takes a tremendous amount of grit and like before anything else i would say uh you need to have the stomach and you need to have the grit and you need to you need to just uh be able to eat glass for for cycles on end and that to be totally out of your control i think a lot of people have come up to me since the spack announcement and said you know this is the crowning achievement on a you know for a for a company how does it feel like everyone's goal is to go public and um you know all these other great things that are true And I think are amazing and help remind me of how far we've come. But every time I get that question, I'd really go back and I just think about the millions of very small decisions that led up to this. And it's it's it feels surreal in some in some cases. But the the guiding principle is to, you know, we've been doing this, you know, you know, really underfold since 2019. And it's really just been heads down building and trying to create something that adds value to people's lives in ways that they they pay us for that and they help grow the product.

And it really all fanned out from that. You know, I remember early days, feelings of deep, you know, anxiety about how do we find product market fit? Is Bitcoin big enough? Are there enough people that want to accumulate this that can build a big business? My anxieties have been completely overwhelmed by the response that we got. Bitcoin is, I think, building in Bitcoin right now is one of the largest potential markets and one of the most valuable markets that you could possibly focus on as a builder. Take away just what's great about Bitcoin overall and just look at the market, the amount of people, the growth

of the space, the value being generated here. It's hard to find another market that even comes close and so i think there's so much promise but that wasn't always understood of how big it is how many companies can this this space support and how fast is it going to grow and it's all all of that just surpassed all of my expectations um the next is is really just you know focusing on building a product day by day in times of just incredible uncertainties i look back at and some of the hardest times that we've been through at Fold have been years into a deep bear market when you just feel like there is no end to this. And what that did for us was allowed us to focus on building a great solid business that can survive and exist through cycles. Some entrepreneurs

building in other industries don't have quite as intense cycles as we do. And so it just forced you to really build a good business to build something that had value not to your customers but that could stand on itself and uh i think really getting back to the the the team you know the the my friends and founders is it takes an immense amount of grit constant perseverance but really as a bitcoin founder we get a couple major things that i think are are really special to the space. Number one, Fold's biggest wins have been from finding Bitcoiners who are aligned with us or friendly with us in all aspects, whether they are capital allocators, whether they are sitting within corporations that we want to partner with, whether they are content creators

and they have a platform that we can use. All of Fold's biggest wins have come from within the Bitcoin network and ecosystem. It has never, ever once relied on someone outside of Bitcoin giving us a handout or giving us something away that they went out of their way to do. No one has given us anything except for those in the Bitcoin space. And so I'd say never underestimate the network that exists in Bitcoin, whether that's the user base, the founders, the content creators, all of this stuff is such an immense value that you should be taking full use of the second is like use the cycles the bear and the bulls to just grind you closer to the truth about what a business should be it should be sustainable it should make money it should grow and allow the

bulls the bull cycles to just let you expand your understanding of how big it is that how big of a thing you could build. Every bull cycle has constantly left me with, I was thinking too small. I was thinking too small. And each time I go into a bear cycle after that bull, it's all about planning to think bigger, lay the groundwork for a bigger vision. And a lot of that is because Bitcoin attracts great people. Bitcoin surpasses all of our expectations. and having to build a company with a team within that world comes with immense challenges, but also at the end of the day,

Fold would not be going public. We would not have the team we have. We would not have the product we have if we weren't building within Bitcoin. I think it just made us better in almost every single way, although some of those lessons were really hard to learn. This episode was presented by River. River is the best, most secure place to buy Bitcoin

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90,000 Bitcoin with 12,000 keys on their platform. Their platform leverages Bitcoin's native multi-sig properties. Their cornerstone product is their Volt product, a two or three multi-sig Volt, which allows you to hold two of three keys in a multi-sig quorum. That gives you full control over your Bitcoin. They also have an IRA product, a lending desk, and they're rolling out a bunch of other products including inheritance protocol and sound advisory so go to unchained.com set up a call with our concierge onboarding team today tell them that tftc sent you and use the promo code tftc at checkout unchained.com well let's dig into two points there like building on bitcoin being one of the best places to build right now like what particularly about the asset the market

makes you believe that and then two digging into the last point about really timing the cycles particularly your product product roadmap and and what you decide to build and when like could you point to a particular example in a bear market where you went into it and you prepared for 18 to 24 months and then came out the other side to a bull market and we're ready to capture a lot of that growth when it rematerialized? Yeah, I think, you know, in times of bull markets and bear markets, I would say one of the best examples is truly this transaction that fold just it with this SPAC transaction. In the last bear market, you know, that we are still kind of in to some extent into some of the throes of it you know we looked at what are the what are the biggest ways

to maximize folds impact like what where could we take the company whether that's a product whether that's a new marketing campaign whether that's a new talent to bring in what could we do that would truly increase the aperture and potential impact the company could have and we saw, you know, we looked at products and we're about to release them. You know, we have an incredible roadmap ahead of us. We have, you know, business accounts that will allow any business to run on a Bitcoin standard, earning Bitcoin rewards off just the normal course of their business, allowing you to build your own treasury. We have a credit card that is one of the most requested products in all of, you know, from in all of our history and one that we're excited to

launch. But really, we started to see that this probably the main things would come from products and building new things. But it would also be about restructuring how the company has access to talent, to capital, to leadership in the space. And we saw that as a company that has been building great Bitcoin products that have all of the intention to throw off Bitcoin as profit, that has been investing in Bitcoin from previous investment rounds, that we've also been building a treasury, that taking a Bitcoin company to public markets is something that, number one, doesn't exist uh there is no model of a company that is essentially operating as as close as one could probably be on a bitcoin standard um building a treasury building on bitcoin serving

bitcoiners built by bitcoiners and we thought that that was one of the most important things that we could do and we looked in you know months and months and months ago and said well where i mean year ago and said how do we how could we possibly get there what's what are our various pathways And again, we're in the in the depths of a bear market when there was no opportunity for us to go, you know, no clear opportunity for us to go public at that time. And so what we ended up doing is to stay really true to what has always worked for us before. Find the Bitcoiners, find those that understand that vision, because taking a company public is not just a decision that a company makes. It's a decision that a very wide set of people make together and get aligned on. It is not only our company, it's auditors, it's legal teams, it's public sponsor partners.

So we found the Betsy and Daniel Cohen for our current SPAC announcement that we did. It is the SEC. All of these people need to be aligned with this path to go public. And that is a show all your history, your financials, where you're going, where you've been, where you're going. and everyone has to get the story. And telling that story that we were telling is we're going to be a Bitcoin standard operating on a Bitcoin treasury and having a Bitcoin core company focused on delivering financial services. And it was not easy to find where that message would land

in a more traditional finance perspective. And so we looked at IPO routes, we looked at merger routes. We looked at SPAC routes. And ultimately, the way we got to where we came from is we were able to meet people who were like-minded, who, number one, had experience bringing companies public, had experience in traditional banking and internet banking, that also deeply understood the story that we were going to bring to market. And once we found that, it was something that we had noticed in our past where, okay, we have found our in, we have found our allies in this new space. And together, we can bring something truly special to market. That's why the Fold debit card came to market.

That's where some of Fold's best partnerships with venture capital came, 1031. That's where our partnerships with merchants and Fortune 500 companies that we've partnered with, that's where all the best thing happened. So once we saw that kind of unlocked, that someone deeply understood our vision, wanted a partner on it, we knew that not only did we have the team, we had the right story, and now it was just all about timing. And now we look, you know, for this transaction is looking to close this year. I don't think we could have been set up for a better timing. And the SPAC is really great for timing because it's a very clean and fast way of going about this process. And so I'd say that was the perfect example of a plan hatched in the bear market of what we could do in the upcoming cycle that we learned in the previous bull market was going to be valuable. And that was a lot to do with the likes of people like Saylor, people like the initial waves of the Bitcoin treasury strategy coming to maturity.

And we saw that and we said, OK, a Bitcoin company needs to be in the public markets. It needs to follow that strategy. And also, it needs to be furthering Bitcoin development, and it needs to be throwing off Bitcoin in the normal course of our operations. And it was seeing those examples in the previous bull market, moving into the bear market, planning, and having the exact right timing to launch as a public company, right as I believe we're in the foothills of the next bull run. Yeah.

Yeah. No, it's funny because a lot of investors and founders would assume that you wait until the bull market's raging and valuations are going crazy. And it's like, all right, then we'll go public. But as you just mentioned, it's a process that takes well over a year, sometimes multiple years. And planning that in the bear market is probably one of the smartest things you can do to catch the upside once you go public you've seen it i've seen it i've been bitten by this but especially for bitcoin founders one of the things that you learn so early is that if you are not uh you uh you are not fully ready to take advantage of the bull market you are you are you are removing massive amounts of upside for you um bear markets are entirely for preparing

for bull markets. I know of exchanges, some of the primary exchanges at the height of previous bull markets were doing 100,000 new accounts an hour. Just an absolute onslaught of growth. And that's how Bitcoin works. We look at Fold's growth charts, and we've been growing every year. But when you look at us during bull markets, we're growing 180%, 200% a year. It is truly, it's hard to, as a first-time founder and someone who's building a company in this space and someone who has not built during a bull market, it's really hard to understand how the growth happens in this space and how violent it is to the upside and then how it can go through periods of years where you need to find the growth. You need to develop the great user relationships, good referral programs, build something that people want to share. but in the bull markets like you're going up no matter what and you just need to make sure your your product is prepared for that and so what we said in the last bear market was there's two

things that we're missing number one you you you heard about the we just spoke about the hey there needs to be a public um bitcoin company and we think we're the best possible bitcoin company to do this we have a great consumer product we're really top of funnel there's a great story around us we are actively onboarding people onto a bitcoin standard i think like it's just it just works the other part was um during the previous bull market fold was only a rewards company you could only uh earn rewards for using your debit card or for buying a gift card or taking advantage of a merchant offer and we had a great uh user base you know with hundreds of thousands of people of earning rewards but what we also saw was that those same people would earn rewards with us would

go buy their bitcoin elsewhere from other companies and it never made sense to us like we are getting the paycheck in they're earning the rewards through us why aren't we being the number one place for them to also buy their bitcoin and so we made a big decision in the last bear market to make sure the the platform was set up to be a place where you could also acquire bitcoin through buying it dca roundups smash buys things like that paycheck conversions and that has truly changed our business and one that we think is going to allow us to approach this next bull market and be a an incredible force for new adoption and a kind of a one-stop shop and so you know i'd say for new builders like this right now you need to get your act together ship whatever you can now

have it out as soon as possible to get to get maximum exposure to the bull market you know some of the best Bitcoin companies die because they didn't take advantage of the bull market in the way that they could have or they don't get their product out in time and so that's one of the things I try to tell a lot of founders that I meet is you need to be shipping much earlier than you think you do and you need to be well well prepared and have good timing for the bull markets Quick break here, freaks. This rip is brought to you by Gradually Then Suddenly, a framework for understanding Bitcoin as money by Parker Lewis. I wrote the foreword to the book. I'm honored to have done so because it's the best zero to one primer if you're looking for

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subscription. Zaprite.com slash TFTC, $40 off. Digging into Fold, the product, not only that, but the user base, what is the predominant archetype of a Fold user that is living on a Bitcoin standard using your application? So Fold has gone through a few cycles. Our first iteration of the product which was spend your bitcoin to buy things uh was primarily people already living on a bitcoin standard having paid in bitcoin um and we're just looking for a way to live like to get groceries and necessities we then switched to rewards and that really flipped we went from going from a primarily in a very og very bitcoin um standard focused uh customer base to top of funnel to just people of like not ready to buy just want to earn passively on the side

completely different parts of the funnel that also kicked off a ton of growth for us and what we've seen is that since launching that product most of that user base has really matured they're now not just earning bitcoin rewards they're buying bitcoin but they've also seen that since 2019, you know, when Bitcoin was maybe 5% of their portfolio, it now is maybe 25, 30, 40, 50%. And that changes your entire needs for the asset. Now it's instead of something that's kind of just sitting there on the side of all your other investments, it's your primary savings store of value. And that begs all kinds of questions about, you know, what do I use as my daily form of money? How do I get loans? Hey, I'm about to buy a house. And what we see very

frequently is that today our user base, the primary architect, our archetype is a guy in his 30s who is either has just has a kid or two or is about to have kids. He's about to potentially buy a home or just bought a home or potentially want to refinance a home. They're looking at their businesses that they're starting. Either they have a fledgling kind of side business on top of their salary business or they're a full entrepreneur. And they're looking to make long term financial plans and why i think this is such a in you know to your first question about like why is bitcoin such a valuable um industry to work in and it's really the people that are not only seeking out bitcoin are extremely valuable people um uh they are you know generally

uh higher earners they are looking to make investments they uh show proof of work they put their money where their mouth is. If the product is good, they will pay for it. And it's just a wonderful user base for a new Bitcoin entrepreneur to kind of get started in. But that archetype is really about my whole life is ahead of me. I have now been saving in Bitcoin for many years. My financial picture is different. I now have a family. I have a house or I'm on the way to get a house and I'm going to start planning for my Citadel, for my legacy. And there probably couldn't be a more valuable user base than a group that's sitting in that position. And for Fold, we intend fully to provide them the tools that they need because today that group is so

underserved by traditional finance. Go ahead. One of the most common things we get and have to help with are mortgage lenders who say hey we want to get you a loan but we're not going to be able to account for any of your bitcoin holdings sorry you know you may be doing just fine in life but we can't count that and we we also can't really count your entrepreneurial businesses that you do on the side and so a lot of people with plenty of money upward mobility uh how we've been doing all the right things of saving are just being essentially you know told you know uh told to uh uh push to the exit for by traditional finance and we see as this is an incredible blunder they're making but ultimately what it's folds one of our major opportunities is

what i think growing one of the most valuable consumer financial user bases that we could possibly find in in in the market today so i think it's it's a very special place to be and i can't believe they've given us such opportunity and the more and more i learn from them they're not going do this for another five six years anyway well that's perfect segue into my next point is like going public later this year getting into the public markets and having to publicly share fold story um as comes with the territory of going public like do you envision yourself in fold as breaking the ice not only for other bitcoin companies but really waving your flag and saying, look over here, look what we're doing.

Look at how everybody is leveraging Bitcoin to increase the quality of their life via these financial applications and products. Like how, I mean, obviously Matt's a big stay humble guy, but dropping the humility as much as possible. Like what do you think this means not only for Fold, but for the concept of incorporating Bitcoin not only into your financial life

in the terms of a savings vehicle, but being able to leverage it as collateral to go out and buy a house and do other things that people are familiar with and comfortable with traditional financial firms. Yeah, I think we're at an inflection point with Bitcoin where it's going from this group, this small kind of community that was early adopters, niche kind of more insular community to the bounds of broken, right?

You know, you're looking at the Bitcoin story and narrative is going far beyond, you know, the Bitcoin podcast, the Bitcoin Twitter. It is now being a story that's being told in much larger circles by people who have never heard of a Bitcoin podcast or Bitcoin Twitter. And it is only going to continue. The ETS did a big thing in that regard. Sovereign Adoption is doing a big thing in that regard. and also just Bitcoin's presence in the consumer's portfolio is changing lives. Bitcoin changes lives. And I think you and I both know a lot of people whose lives have been changed by Bitcoin.

And that insight, that experience is only fanning out through society. And it's getting further and further from this kind of early adopter cohort. but ultimately this means that the world is is is is coming to a point where merely mentioning bitcoin or is not going to be required you know explain to me uh about you know you're not gonna have to go through talking about the history of money you're gonna say hey just look around you the people that have integrated with bitcoin into their lives are doing better and it's now time for you to do the same and it's just going to become a thing like that of like hey why don't you have nvidia stock in your portfolio um instead is like hey why why you know what's your balance

your balance and savings versus dollars and bitcoin it's gonna be very common for people to uh be talking about 20 30 percent into bitcoin and we know that this is a wave that's about to hit and so for us like we love to stack stats and stay humble but um in some respects going public was to throw off the humility and say, we believe Fold is possibly one of the best Bitcoin-only and Bitcoin-focused companies to go public, that is bringing real value to end consumers, that we have a much, much bigger story to tell, and that we're really just getting started. And we're going to be loud about that and not shy away from that. So I think some of the humility will go. But it's also to hopefully leave a playbook for others that are in our footsteps.

You know, Saylor, I really do take a lot from him that he's created a playbook for this. You know, Fold fully intends to create a playbook, not only for public companies, but for new or for private companies too, to how to build a Bitcoin company and weather the storms of the cycles. How do you build a treasury as a Bitcoin company and start contributing back in this way so that we do our own work to accelerate that whole process. Yeah. And in terms of like the MicroStrategy playbook and others that have begun to implement that playbook, whether it be MetaPlanet, Similar Scientific, a couple others that are definitely mulling it around, I think what excites me the most about a company like fold going public and then doing the micro strategy

playbook as well as the operating business behind it that's operating on a bitcoin standard that has a growing product line that's appealing to more people i actually think that will be unique in the public markets once fold is officially public is it's not really this go out raise convertible debt or whatever to buy more bitcoins like no we're going to grow our operating business as well and add these bitcoin tools and stack sats and in more than one way and i think that um is going to be a major differentiator for you guys because um got michael saylor's crushed it the last four years and really paved the way for everybody but i think in terms of innovation on the strategy i think the business model that you guys are coming to market with is a great example

of, OK, this is a cool playbook, but imagine if we have this insanely profitable and appealing operating business behind it as well. Yeah, I think it's a little bit about, you know, say, I mean, we've it's kind of come full circle. A lot of the companies that, you know, I, you know, have started with or were peers with when they were starting, you know, all of us to some extent were building Bitcoin treasuries. And a lot of those treasuries were built, you know, Folds specifically was built through um investment that came in we would allocate into bitcoin and hold some of that in our treasury uh as well as you know as our customers are earning rewards we always buy more rewards than our liability is and so we're able to it's essentially a way of

constantly dca um uh into bitcoin as well and we we have directly seen the benefits of having a Bitcoin treasury when we needed it most as a private company, when there were no when there was no capital to be found anywhere, when it wasn't just a bear market in the Bitcoin world, but also in the the traditional world. You know, all we had to rely on was our business. And so what did we do? We did two things. We made sure that we efficiently looked to our treasury to find our path out of this and to grow out of this. And the second was, hey, let's revisit our business. Let's make sure every product line we have is profitable. Let's make sure that every dollar that comes into fold and every new user that comes into fold is positively contributing

to our bottom line. And we had to answer those questions because there was no capital that was going to come in to save us. It was really, it was this problem we had to solve on our own. And our treasury helped us solve that. And us approaching to building a business that is sustainable was powerful. And then we looked at, okay, this needs to be a public company to attract more capital investment, but also to imitate a lot of the great innovations that Saylor has brought to the table. And now we look back and like you said, we want to contribute back and say, hey, we actually not only have that, but we have a different thing as well. We have an operating business that is receiving revenues in Bitcoin, like natively in Bitcoin. We don't have to swap

it out for dollars. It's receiving revenues natively in Bitcoin. We are DCAing every single day as our users are earning more rewards. We actually are buying more rewards on top of it, which is ultimately denominated in Bitcoin. We've also sold equity for Infold, which we've taken the proceeds and put that in Bitcoin. And so we are really open about all the creative ways about doing it. But ultimately, it's really in service of increasing Bitcoin density or the SATs density of Fold,

not only for our customers and how much they can earn in their daily lives and build their own Bitcoin treasury, But we do that too at Fold. And we know that not just because we've read some hype blogs on Saylor, but we've like literally lived the ups and downs of operating a business on a Bitcoin standard. And we've been saved by it. And we've seen incredible opportunity by it. And that's part of going, you know, our public story. And I think you're exactly right. There will be nothing like Fold on the public markets, but I also don't doubt that we will see an onslaught of others join us. I know many other Bitcoin companies who I think would be excellent public companies when the time is right for them. And I think Fold will be out there as a first mover for a while. And our idea is to help educate and share our stories to get, you know, to get them the insight they need to make, you know, the right calls for themselves.

But I ultimately think the stock market and the NASDAQ is going to be completely kind of in a similar way. They just kind of originally looked at micro strategy kind of in a confused way and saying, well, what's going on there? Can't you just buy the ETF? And then truly understanding the dynamics of what's happening has led to a phase shift, not only with more companies following that strategy. But I think Fold itself is also going to lead in saying, hey, accepting Bitcoin payments as a business, as a public company, is not just to let people with Bitcoin pay for things. It's so that you can receive Bitcoin natively and you can ideally keep some of that in Bitcoin because there is no more efficient way of adding Bitcoin to your balance sheet than receiving Bitcoin native revenues. It does not dilute your shares or your existing shareholders. It is the most efficient possible way of bringing Bitcoin into the balance sheet. And the promise for Fold is that, you know, as the Bitcoin continues to grow and it's growing faster than the Internet itself,

our ability to acquire Bitcoin onto our balance sheet through our daily course of business is only going to grow with that as well exponentially. And we see that, yes, over the short term, the micro-sailor strategy will probably lead to the majority of Fold's treasury holdings. But we see over time that the best opportunity is really just creating an excellent Bitcoin business that throws Bitcoin off directly into the treasury. Well, I think it's particularly beautiful because you've set up this somewhat symbiotic relationship with your user base, where as you guys are able to do this you're providing more products where they can do like you were tweeting out earlier today that you stacked more than half of bitcoin simply by using your application getting getting bitcoin rewards for paying your bills and so let's dig in that's like when it comes to somebody purveying the field of of companies that can partner with to

um to to manage their their financial well-being like that's i think the passivity of fold you simply plug in your your ach information and point point that at the bills you're paying you're passively stacking bitcoin i think that is beautiful and then you guys have run the numbers too like if you if you look at the average growth of the the bitcoin rewards uh that your users have have accumulated as they've been paying their bills and using the full debit card um and then you match it with something like points or cash back it is undeniably a better product from the terms of purchasing power that that user gets with with full rewards compared to typical cash back rewards yeah i mean we've given away over 45 million uh dollars in bitcoin if we had given

that same Bitcoin away or those same rewards away in cash, it would be just above $20 million. And so it's a very real thing that those who adopt Bitcoin and those who adopt Fold increase their purchasing power, increase their savings power. And it's truly amazing to me how we can have such incredible effects on just the personal finances of our users. When most of the focus on this entire space has been really unduly focused on the Coinbase model of speculation, casino floor, and high velocity trading. And that's how you get rich in crypto or Bitcoin, which couldn't be farther from the truth. And in fact, full zone data and full zone user base shows it's actually much more boring than that. It's much simpler than that. It's about focusing on

Bitcoin, a company that focuses on Bitcoin as a long term savings asset, asset as a means to financial freedom and empowerment is really simple. Just make sure everyone who logs onto your app every day or ends the day with more Bitcoin than they started with. Give them all the tools that they need to conduct all of their traditional financial needs. I need to be able to buy things. I need to hold my money. I need to get a loan. Just provide those things and make sure that your own finances is just either passively generating Bitcoin for you or allows you to accumulate it regularly. And that will truly transform people's finances. And it's incredible to see that in the data where you see people who just started with rewards and now have more

rewards value in their rewards account than they do in their fiat savings accounts. And that's when you start to see this kind of domino fall of the holy shit i get it i get why are my fold rewards so high um why is why do i still feel like i'm it's it's harder to keep up today why do i feel like my dollar goes a lot a lot um less far than it used to and there's just a thing that clicks and folds platform allows you to truly make that transition of saying hey i'm going to integrate Bitcoin rewards into my life. I'm going to integrate Bitcoin savings into my life. I'm going to integrate a Bitcoin standard into my life. Fold can totally accommodate that entire life cycle. And it has truly transformed our users, but they have become more financially

secure. They have achieved more of their financial goals. They are more confident going into the future. And all of those things are just not true of the rest of the world where we find ourselves. And it's really just about being focused on that core insight, which really, it feels like it's obvious that, you know, the one thing that crypto and Bitcoin has proven is that Bitcoin is a superior savings asset. And everyone else focuses on trading and speculation. But what about a company who just focuses on that one thing? And that's Fold. And it truly has transformed the people that use it. And I think that that's the piece that i'm most proud of yeah focus boring things boring things can be exciting sometimes you know

it's uh it's not rocket science just stay humble stack sats and build a company that makes it easier to do that for people um now it is again you know i said at the beginning of the conversation but it is really just exciting uh to see how far you guys have come in five years from that simple help people spend bitcoin and get bitcoin back to iterating um adding products and getting to this point where it's oh shit um we have the ability to go go public here i i think the trajectory of all my friends in bitcoin honestly i think we just again this timeline is different and why it's i think it's a lot to do with the people that are here that the people that come to work for bitcoin and for fold have very big ideas and very strongly held ideas about what

the world can be and the more that we you are surrounding yourselves with those people the larger your initial vision grows and i look you know a lot of people are like well uh someone had written a investment thesis on fun folds maybe in 2020 or something like that about why you should invest in full and they revisited that like a year ago and said holy shit not only do they do that but it's so much bigger now how did you have that idea in your head the whole time will and you know for me it was always about build something that's that's extremely valuable for people that people love and just just find that first help people in their lives find that first let and then bring in the right and then bring in people to help you expand that vision and

truly fold has been an exercise about finding allies friends team or team members investors who, upon joining, just slowly increase the aperture of what we were able to dream about, what our vision could be. And I laugh sometimes that our vision all started with flipping a gift card into Bitcoin. And now we're going to be the first financial services company powered by Bitcoin. We're going public. And you look back at how did we get there? And it's truly just bringing an excellent group of people together who think daily about how to expand the vision that also have the ability to live through the ups and downs of bitcoin's very uh very brutal cycles both to the upside and the downside and it's a special type of people that come in to join that

but fold has definitely been the you know beneficiary of of that this is going to come off as self-serving but i do think it's important and part of the reason why i joined 1031 in the first place because again coming up in this space i've been in bitcoin for 11 years publicly for seven years now and i think that's the one thing matt and i learned um building rabbit hole recap citadel dispatch tftc and interviewing founders like yourself and many others throughout the space who are building incredible products, but couldn't find capital that was willing to put a bet behind them because why are you just focused on Bitcoin? Why not crypto? And I think that's the reason we both joined 1031 is like, it's time to go find

money for these companies. And I think that's what we found over the last three years. Building out 1031 is that it is imperative for founders like yourself and others in the space to have capital that is aligned with the vision that you don't have to explain it to that you don't have to answer the question what is the lightning network um what is the value prop of bitcoin why bitcoin only why not crypto um do you feel the same way way there like is it important to have 1031 changed the entire game for uh uh uh capital accessibility for bitcoin companies the history of bitcoin vc uh started off with um uh essentially bitcoin whales and one of the main ones was roger ver and he uh probably was he was a seed investor

in hundreds of Bitcoin companies that you know, most probably not around anymore, but definitely some a handful fold included at some at one point in time. But it really came from people within the space investing in, you know, their Bitcoin after they'd seen a couple cycles, they wanted to contribute back, they wanted to develop a space. And a lot of Bitcoin companies just were, you know, seeded by that. That's why Draper and BoostVC was a big one that you'll see on a lot of people's cap tables. And that money could take you so far, but it was really limited to kind of seed stage opportunities. So once you got past the, oh, okay, we have a product and now we need to scale, it was really hard to find access to capital that could kind of was traditionally there for

other types of startups at that next phase. And the only thing that was there was you had to hit the timing correct because there were no large series A capital allocators in Bitcoin unless it was a bull cycle, unless we were at a top of the market and you had traditional VCs jumping in just because they saw there was hype there was FOMO the lemmings you know we're all running to Bitcoin startups and a lot of startups including Fold like got was was able to benefit from that VC interest that came in to support the series A stage of Bitcoin companies and a lot of other Bitcoin companies were able to to take advantage of that too but what we also see is that once the tide turns and the cycle turns, those traditional VCs are gone. They're completely

gone. They're not allocating to Bitcoin anymore. They found a new thesis that's there. They're a little less responsive. And Bitcoin companies then say, OK, well, what are my options? And you would once again, you'd look to Bitcoin OGs and the whales and maybe that there would be opportunities there uh but also and most of the time it'd be like okay well now we need to start creating a stronger more sustainable business that can that uh could potentially mean monday we don't need any more funding but the missing piece was always a uh a vc and capital allocator that was there at the top of the cycle and at the bottom of the cycle who could tell you at the bottom of the cycle to provide resources for you when you need it at most.

And as well as at the top of the cycle, tell you that it's not going to be around. This is not going to be around forever. Here are the things you should take advantage of. Here are the things that you should be looking to do. And there was just no presence of that, especially anywhere after seed stage, series A, series B, series C.

It was nothing. So a lot of Bitcoin companies got a series, you know, a seed stage. They went out there. They've made a good product. And because there was no there was nothing after that. And especially if they weren't in a bull market, a lot of these companies would either prematurely die because there was just no capital available. They weren't able to scale. So they grew a lot slower than they might have previously. And then 1031 comes along and fills that entire gap.

not only of people that deeply understand Bitcoin, but are people that are able to actually bring the level of capital required to meet the needs of the Bitcoin ecosystem at this new maturity. You know, Fold going public here. You have great businesses like, you know, River, Strike and, you know, countless, Casa, Unchained that are ready for this next stage. They have real revenue. They're great businesses. And they just need the partners to, you know, bring them to the next stage. And 1031 really filled a gap at the right time and was an incredible partner to Fold when we needed it most, but also an incredible partner to just the Bitcoin ecosystem overall, knowing that we have someone on our side who can bring the level of capital required and have the understanding that, hey, I can bring money onto my cap table without sacrificing my control, without sacrificing my vision and without sacrificing my understanding of how Bitcoin works by bringing on people who don't really know about Bitcoin and cycles and how this market works. And so there's truly 1031, I not only, you know, I think accelerated some of the best companies that we know in the Bitcoin space, it saved a lot of great companies that otherwise would not have found capital. And ultimately, I think is just extremely well positioned to ride this next wave, not only to meet them, the companies now at even further stages, but also this next wave of Bitcoin companies that we're going to see. So I don't think you need to be humble at all. I think you guys have made a tremendous impact on.

Well, wasn't. Thank you. It's going back to what you said earlier. it's just this this core group of bitcoiners and i i feel extremely fortunate to have found obviously we've had tftc and the media side but there was always like i never wanted to be just a podcaster so to be able to find that that part of the division of labor we're going to help out great founders like yourself has been immensely rewarding for myself and everybody else on the team and we're people are still sleeping on the space which is insane to us um which we actually

like because it gives us uh more of an opportunity to continue backing the best companies that are we think going to be generational businesses in the future um and that like thinking about it more broadly not just fold 1031 in our portfolio but the industry at large i think that's part of the theme that we've been talking about throughout this whole conversation is we've truly had to do it ourselves against all odds against all the naysayers and i think whether you're a founder bitcoin or an investor out there like it just takes digging your feet in and chewing glass like you said like it's nobody's going to do this for us we've got to help each other out rising tide lifts all boats and um i think when we look back decades from now there will be stories

told about those goddamn crazy Bitcoiners really, really did something special. I couldn't agree more block by block. And, you know, I think we learned we I've learned this lesson many, many times, you know, there's, at every stage of a company, there's always, you know, you're as a founder, you know, this, like you start something early, and it works, and it grows, and then it grows more, and it grows more. But you weren't, it's not like you're an expert at this new level of growth that you're at, you have to learn it. And you have to figure out, okay, how do I run the company now in this context with this, you know, at this level, like what do I have to change in myself? And there's always a, um, a pressure to some extent,

or even a, uh, a feeling that you need to do this where I need to go out and I need to go hire some logos to put on my team. I just need to go hire some, you know, uh, uh, senior people who come from who know what they're doing from the traditional world or i need to um uh you know go out and find investors who you know are name brand investors in you know in traditional vc or whatever and what you realize just at least that i have is that um you know ultimately not only just because working in in bitcoin like you're just not going to get that a lot when when you need it most they're not going to be there for you because Bitcoin cycles are intense and they don't understand how the network works or is growing. But also they won't be there for you. If you did

get them, they won't be there for you when you needed them actually. And so Fold at every step of the way has just said, we're going to double down on people that understand Bitcoin, that understand our vision and our place within it and want to contribute to that specifically. We're not going to come here to try to get people who come from another world and bring them into our world and hopefully they, you know, fold benefits as a result of it. We're not going to sacrifice that. We're actually going to stay in a way, a term that we use within the company a lot is we're going to play our own game. And we're not going to play by the rules that, you know, others put on us or the ways that they've succeeded. We'll learn from them.

But as a Bitcoin company, we need to play our own game. And that's working with people that we are, you know, have loyalty to that understand what we're doing. It's also building a good product that is sustainable. You know, I really one of the good lessons was in 2020, 2020, between 2020 and 2022. You know, we were facing immense competition. We had FTX coming out of absolutely nowhere. We had BlockFi, the rocket ship going up. We had, and who had, and a lot of these, we had Voyager, we had Celsius, all of them had very similar products to us. And sometimes they would do a new product release and we're like, how, you know, we, we use, we have the same product set. I know the economics on how these work. How are they doing what they're doing? It just doesn't, the numbers just don't make sense.

and so for us we had to say well we know how we could do that but that's probably that's sacrificing our ideals that's extraordinarily risky and so we we never pursued those things and so we said okay we need to go in the opposite direction we just need to build a better product that people love more that they relate to more that they connect with more even if maybe the other competitors number just seems higher than you do and we operated for like two years just against extremely stiff competition and we grew through that but really only until it came to a lot of these companies just completely imploding did we say wow not only did we make the right choice that was really hard to make at that at the time because we just weren't sure

of what would set us up for the most success but also all the all the customers who had been at BlockFi or at Voyager or FTX, they all came to Fold. And they said, hey, we love the product. Unfortunately, I lost big time and I lost on something that I had, you know, reservations or hesitations about. And I appreciate the way Fold has built the business about building a business that's good for the customers, that's good for Fold. And it's just really all about playing your own game doing the right thing being true to to bitcoin and those that are working with you and that will take you very very far because in this space there's so many there's a lot of smoke and mirrors from you know the crypto world there's a lot of smoke and mirrors from traditional

financial world coming in and we've only succeeded by you know staying true to those that have supported us along the way and have been there when we really needed it and you know 1031 is absolutely up there yeah if you stand by the banks of the river long enough you'll watch your enemies float by it's not it is i think it's an intuition that many of us have developed over multiple cycles is they are not only price cycles but hype cycles in terms of what's working what's not and a number of the companies that you mentioned we used to get laughed at for not being a part of their cap table but it's like hey we actually know who's building these things the right way that's why we call our funds low time preference funds because this is going to be a

long game and it's much more rewarding too once you do the hard work chew on the glass and take the time and the attention to detail to actually build good products that are good for people because that's what you should it's a crazy thought but you should be striving to build good products that bring value to people and then actually make money at the end of the day instead of trying to push people in casinos and gamble their money away. I mean, you think of where, you know, I think a lot of what Fold wants to do when we enter as a public company is to show like, here's what a Bitcoin financial services company look like.

You guys know and have historically known what a crypto company looks like. Coinbase is there. Every day there's a new coin that you can take your luck on and throw in there. And he has, you know, truly an ethos around, hey, I want to get lucky and get rich and high velocity trading and all of this. And I think what we want to show is not only that the product looks different when it's built by Bitcoiners, like the product just looks different. It feels different as different ends, you know, whereas Coinbase may be focused on trading and speculation. Fold is entirely focused on long-term savings and building that every single day, having fun while doing it, enjoying doing that. We also take a very different approach from, you know, for our customers.

You know, you can't really trade on Fold. It's really about just balancing what makes sense to you of how much your paycheck you want into Bitcoin and looking at how much our customers have saved in Bitcoin. And looking at where Coinbase was in, you know, I don't know, what was it, 2013 or whenever it was when they were founded, like if Coinbase was more centrally focused on building the Bitcoin savings of their customers, you know, I just, it's shocking to think how much wealthier their customers would have been today, how much Bitcoin would be managed under Coinbase. and it applies to their company as well you know if coinbase had taken an ounce of the focus that fold has to building a bitcoin treasury and we've we've today built a thousand bitcoin in our treasury from you know fundraising and buying bitcoin that way of generating bitcoin on money that is coming as revenue if coinbase has been doing that they could have well over a million Bitcoin on their balance sheet just based on where they were. And so I think it will go down

as a, I think we're going to provide a wonderful counterpoint to the rest of the world so that finally we can be like, that's what a crypto company looks like. That's what it does. That's how it operates. And Hey, to a large extent, it's been a big success. And here's how a Bitcoin company operates and here's where they're going, the successes they've had. And I think these two timelines will continue to diverge and our successes will get bigger and be very different than what you may have seen out of Coinbase. And right now, a lot of the world still conflates these things to in a big way, Bitcoin and crypto. I think the last year there's been a lot of good work where we've seen people say Bitcoin and then crypto. But I think a public

company that is truly operating on a Bitcoin standard with a Bitcoin ethos built by Bitcoiners is going to drive home this to, you know, not only to other investors, but to consumers as well on a major scale. Yeah, I mean, to the point on Coinbase is actually a perfect segue into the last question, which I wanted to broach earlier, but it's the importance of team and quality of the team over quantity. You're talking about a company with thousands of employees versus Fold, which is nowhere near that.

Like, how did you guys do this with such a small team, relatively small team? Yeah, I mean, we've again, there's no Bitcoin entrepreneurs at all. The the things that are great about Bitcoin are also the things that they're ultimately come packaged in very difficult lessons. Like the Bitcoin cycles are so hard and acute on companies, especially at very early stage that you just you develop really good habits on how to stay alive and how to thrive when things when when times are tough. And so Fold learned our lesson about, number one, we are operating a Bitcoin company and we have access to some of the best talent in the world because people are coming because they want to make the world a better place by furthering Bitcoin in the world. And Fold is their vehicle to do that. But at the same time, as we have access to the best talent in the world, we also know that as a Bitcoin company, you want to grow very sustainably and making sure that you're looking not just to the next year, but you're looking in Bitcoin's four-year cycles. That's a long time to exist as a company.

And so you need to pick people. You have access to the best people who are looking long term. And the best people, what do they love? they love getting um they love autonomy they love independence they love big challenges and so for fold we've always taken the standpoint of hiring great people and giving them immense challenges to solve and letting them run for forward with it and what we've ultimately seen is that people take huge aspects of the company that they run essentially that they take a that responsibility that they take on is a large chunk of the company, which has made us be very efficient with the

amount of headcount that we have on the team. And so I think that's a bit about it, but it's also been, Hey, not only do these people need to be really good at what they do and manage a whole aspect of the company, but they want, they need to solve big challenges and they need to be very creative. They need to be very hungry for making a career defining choice or career defining initiative. And luckily, most of the people on the Fold team have gotten that at Fold. They've gotten something that even if they leave Fold, they could go. And I think at the end of their careers, that would be one of the things on their list of the best things that they've done or been most proud of. And so it's surrounding yourself with that, but never getting too far over your

skis because building a business is hard. Building a Bitcoin business is harder, especially at early stage. But all of those challenges come with great things. You build great business practices by building solid, sustainable companies. You have access to the best talent. And you're operating within an industry that essentially every year is growing exponentially and allowing you to dream with it, to enlarge and increase your vision with each successive year. Because no matter how big your vision is, it's definitely not bigger than Bitcoin. And Bitcoin is constantly showing you the next horizon. And so as long as you're continuing to match that growth with your own and the vision for the company, and you have that great support of all these people behind you,

you know, you're bound to succeed, although that journey is very difficult. Yes, it is. We're going to win. That was an incredible way to end the show, Will. i can't thank you enough for joining us and being a friend over the years and i'm gonna say one more time it's just uh incredibly rewarding as an outsider looking in um on the growth of yourself and fold over the last five years i'm really excited for this next chapter of fold and i'm sure we'll have much more to talk about at some point in the future once you guys are officially public and out there waving the flag of bitcoin making everybody jealous that they didn't think of it first

well uh we will be there to welcome everybody there and i like i truly have always thought that uh you know bitcoin uh you know every progress every bitcoin company that has made meaningful progress in some way now you can we can all point to some of the you know primary bitcoin companies out there and say hey they did this that unlocked this for me and my company i hope that this one for for them and whether that's more going public or them staying private and us increasing the surface area of where bitcoin is spoken about where bitcoin is represented is going to be great i think we're going to have i truly think our bitcoin business accounts and our bitcoin credit card are going to be mainstream level products that are just going to be a

tremendous you know uh success and another way of just expanding this story that we're telling And I think that the growth that we've seen, that you and I started talking about at the beginning of the podcast in 2019 at the San Francisco, where you were with the RHR recording out of a parking lot and myself passing out flyers on the street to download the First Fold app. And now looking at where we are here, I am just completely excited about where this next cycle is going to take, take both of us and the Bitcoin space in general. And I couldn't be more excited that Fold's going to be a public company doing that. Yeah, feels like we're at the bottom of the exponential curve looking up. But yeah, the foothills, I like to call the foothills of our bull run. We've got we've still got a lot of work to do. Let's not get complacent here.

we're gonna we're gonna crush it but we still gotta keep pushing it forward and i think uh yourself and your team at fold are a great example of people doing that in the space so again thank you for joining us i'm so pumped for you guys man it's always a pleasure marty and uh uh it's uh been great not only to build alongside of you but be your friend and also build build watch you build your family my family it's been it's been a full life experience this this this journey that we've taken yeah when uh when the dust settles if it ever settles we'll have to get the families together uh in wine country and uh enjoy a few glasses of uh of california wine we can we can definitely do that or i would love to experience marty's shore

wherever shoreline that is and then i'll we'll show you our uh our shore which is on the other side of the border a quick drive from us so we'll do a swap we'll it's uh we'll talk off air we'll get this we'll get this ball rolling too all right that's all we got today freaks peace and love